There may be disagreements on foreign policy among conservatives, but one thing that there’s near universal agreement on is that President Obama’s foreign policy has been an abysmal failure. That’s why it was especially noteworthy that Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., already facing an uphill battle in winning over conservative primary voters on foreign policy, has embraced the disastrous, John Kerry-led negotiations with the radical Islamic Iranian regime.
Speaking at a meeting sponsored by the Wall Street Journal, “Mr. Paul said he doesn’t favor increasing sanctions on Iran as the U.S. continues diplomatic efforts aimed at ending the Iranian nuclear weapons program, saying, ‘I think it would be a mistake to push them away from the table.’ ” Another story quotes him as saying he was worried that new sanctions would hurt the progress that was made so far.
This is an incredible statement on multiple levels. To start, if Paul wanted to oppose more sanctions against Iran, there were multiple arguments available to him. For instance, he could have made a broader economic libertarian argument against sanctions, or perhaps argued that sanctions weren’t effective because they mainly hurt average people rather than the nation’s leaders.
But to throw in his lot with the Keystone Kop negotiating team Obama and Kerry have assembled is mind-blowing. As the Washington Examiner noted in an editorial Monday, the Obama administration’s negotiations with Iran are a dangerous charade. Last December, following what was then a six-month interim agreement, Kerry pleaded with Congress to allow his negotiators time to do their jobs and to hold off on sanctions. A year later, the radical Iranian regime has pocketed tens of billions of dollars in sanctions relief as well as concessions on uranium enrichment, plutonium development and missile technology. There are signs that the regime is violating the interim agreement, and there’s no reason to believe they’d abide by any final deal.
Kerry is getting played like a rube — and the only ones really defending the Obama administration are its remaining sycophants. Paul’s statement comes as Senate Foreign Relations Committee chair Bob Menendez — a Democrat — is pushing back against the Obama administration by calling for more sanctions.
What’s also amazing is that in the process of endorsing the Kerry-led Iran negotiations, “Mr. Paul noted that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he thought the extension was a good thing, and that his suggestion might change some of the debate.”
This is a gross distortion of what Netanyahu said. Netanyahu’s actual position was, “We have always said that no agreement is preferable to a bad agreement and the agreement that Iran signed is a very bad and dangerous agreement for Israel, for the region and in my opinion for the future of the entire world.” In other words, Netanyahu wasn’t saying the extension was a good thing, he was saying it was less bad than the atrocious deal Obama and Kerry were on the verge of cutting that would have made it much more likely that Iran would become a nuclear power.
Should a new sanctions bill come up for a vote, it will likely get overwhelming support in the U.S. Senate — and should Paul vote against the sanctions, he will likely be the only Republican to do so. He’ll have to defend, in the midst of a Republican primary, why he took a lonely stand to give bipartisan cover to a farce that has come to epitomize Obama’s failed foreign policy. Months from now, when conservative media are filled with reports of how the administration is playing a dangerous game with Iran, Paul will be on the debate stage having to explain why, when it came time to confront the administration, he stood with Obama and Kerry instead.
Of course, it’s also possible that Paul could end up completely reversing himself on sanctions. He’s been gaining a reputation for flip-flopping on foreign policy as he tries to thread the needle between his father’s brand of non-interventionism and the foreign policy views of most Republican primary voters. He already, for instance, endorsed airstrikes against the Islamic State months after claiming that in doing so, the U.S. would be acting as Iran’s air force.
So I suppose there’s still time for his Iran policy to morph from woefully misguided to utterly incoherent.
